Kaltuma (pictured right), and a dozen amazing women and men like her, will now save lives in their villages.
How? It's all because of our freshly-conducted training for volunteer Community Health Workers (CHWs) from each of the four villages we're helping in central Kenya.
Mothers don't need to die unneccessarily in childbirth. Infants don't have to perish from diarrhea. Over 80% of the disease and death in the poor villages is highly preventable. That's why, in the "Wellness" sector of our Transformational Community Development, we focus on prevention. The old saying is true: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
The villages long to have better health. So we recently had our four villages send their Wellness committee members to the first of three trainings we helped conduct with a local health outreach. After completing their training, these volunteers will be linked to the District Health Office and be officially designated as CHWs for their village.
The training was co-conducted by our fantastic Public Health summer intern from the US, Priscila Bercea. Priscila is pursuing a Masters in Public Health at the University of Michigan, and she eagerly worked with our four villages all summer -- culminating in this life-transforming training.
As Priscila tells the story, the 4-day training was electric with wide-eyed learning, animated role-playing, step-dy-step demonstrations and open discussions. And here's a BIG bonus: the trainees experienced joyful unity and bonding, and they were from several tribes whose members have even recently killed one another.
HUGE THANKS to those of you who sponsor these four villages in our Adopt-a-Village program. You are saving lives in the poorest villages of the world!
Here's Priscila:
And here are the trainee groups from our four villages: Bulesa Dima, Ola Nagele, Gambella and Shambani.
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